i will preface this by saying this my favorite touhou game- and also the first i've ever played properly, so i may be biased. but no other touhou hits quite like this one for me.

i have a lot of thoughts about how this game broke from the mold the previous windows era titles set for themselves, and while i think most of the changes were positive, there are enough things to pick at that i feel deserve their own review.
the pros of this game are that it plays much more smoothly than the games that came before it, i find the movement more snappy and responsive than something like, say, perfect cherry blossom, and the addition of making the point-of-collection line available at all times is one of the better things ZUN has come up with, so much so that it's now the rule for all touhou games.

continues in this game are unlimited, but they make you start over at base health from the start of the stage you died on, while i think this is a great crutch for beginners, i feel like it could've been improved by making it so you can choose your starting health like in previous games, and this change doesn't beat the practice mode from previous games either.

now onto the elephant in the room: bombs and power are now tied together, you lose 1.0 power per bomb, and each bomb gets weaker/smaller, while in practice this allows for more bomb spamming, it gets tough when you're playing through a particularly hard and/or long spell card. the more you bomb, the weaker you get, the more time it takes you to actually beat the spell card. this is mostly a problem with the final and extra bosses of the game, and while the solution to this is just "git gud and bomb less", i can't help but miss the bombs in previous games, where you could count on always getting powerful resources back even if you lose a life. would be slightly less mad about this if the bombs didn't get weaker, bur oh well.

besides all the jank, this game is amazing- one of the best OSTs in the franchise, some of the best characters, the aesthetics are on point, ZUN started to care more for worldbuilding around this era of touhou, something i'm an absolute sucker for, and as it stands it's one of the best games for beginners in my opinion. the gimmick of this game only matters for scoring, which is not something a new player will particularly care for, making it a simpler experience. it is not the easiest game in the franchise but i feel it's just the right amount of challenging, and anyone dedicated enough will find great satisfaction in mastering the game.

kanako best girl